The Road to Feminist Ecological Economics:

Finding a Solution in Feminist Ecological Economics

In this final blog post, I will be looking at what we have learned in the previous two posts and attempting to bridge the very different areas of knowledge covered so far. The question of how we can reconcile “economics” with the concerns of ecofeminism and Environmentalism of the Poor. Traditional economics has left little room to ponder the lives of women and even less room for the lives of people in countries in the Global South. However, with economics being the dominant point of worldview, is it possible to use some of the rhetoric to carve out a new form of economics, which is able to take the experiences of people in the Global South and women seriously?

Ecological Economics

Ecological economics sees the economy as just one part of the environment in which we live and has an intersectional approach in attempting to organise society. Additionally, it considers the planetary boundaries and directly addresses the point where we are significantly past this boundary (Krausmann, 2017). This is in stark contrast to both heterodox and orthodox economics, whose paradigms are based on constant growth and expansion. Ecological economics dares to ask the question of sufficiency, whether we really need constant economic growth to survive. While we currently haven’t been able to decouple growth from increasing greenhouse emissions, the question of whether we need growth is ever present. What would happen in a degrowth society? Ecological economics allows us to start asking these questions, which many traditional economics professors would merely simply scoff at if asked to consider as a realistic possibility. The across-the-board rejection of the Anthropocene understanding of the world, allows ecological economists to examine the unequal power structures with an intersectional and more inclusive lens (Malm & Hornborg, 2014). Due to the intersectionality of the discipline, it is better able to adapt to new ideas and adjust to culturally specific traditions on the local level. 

A core concept within ecological economics is that of social metabolism, which means all the things that go into ensuring the continuation of a functioning society. For instance, we need food, energy, and shelter, but also a means of obtaining the food and a way for the energy we need to reach our house. All these highly complex systems combined make up our social metabolism. As with our human metabolism, there is a by-product of the social metabolism, which comes in the form of water, emissions and exports to other markets (Krausmann, 2017, p. 110). The social metabolism of the world’s population, especially in Europe and the United States, has increased exponentially since the Industrial Revolution and this massive increase in consumption has led us down the path of climate degradation. Since the 1980’s the middle-income countries in the Global South have started to consume more material, which has contributed to the further deepening of the climate crisis (ibid. p. 113). When placing restrictions on who should be allowed to consume the raw materials, such as coal and oil, one often enters into the social justice side of the debate. So-called developing countries, which are increasing their production capacity, are following the European model of development. Since we have not found a way of facilitating development without also increasing consumption, it becomes a question of justice, who has a right to consume the materials at our disposal? 

While there are significant drawbacks to ecological economics, the most significant is the difficulty in getting it recognised to the level of mainstream economics due to its growth scepticism. Further, it would also be a political struggle to implement ecological economic structures in a Western liberal democracy, due to the short election cycles and a political climate which is increasingly leaning to the right side of the political spectrum, where environmental policies tend to take a backseat behind preserving jobs in an established national industry (Povitkina, 2018). 

The Importance of a Feminist Ecological Economics

It is important to ensure that we create a feminist ecological economics, to ensure the inclusion of women and marginalised peoples, who are the ones worst affected by the climate crisis and capitalist production as a whole. By explicitly including a feminist ecological perspective on economics, it becomes much more inclusive and relatable to a higher amount of people. Lessons from Environmentalism of the Poor have helped frame the importance of environmental justice and the recognition of the unequal distribution of the consequences of the climate crisis (Martinez-Alier, 2002). This disproportionate pressure on poor people, peasants, and rural farmers in the Global South, can contribute to producing a discourse that rejects the notion of our equal responsibility for planetary degradation. By including the Environmentalism of the Poor in a feminist ecological economics paradigm, we can draw from the lessons of local and indigenous communities, making it possible to structure a more just society from the bottom up. 

Conclusion

To conclude this series of blog posts, I want to highlight the importance of retaining our critical thinking skills. We explored mainstream orthodox and heterodox economics in the first entry of the series, where we saw how important it is to explicitly ensure the inclusion of women, people of colour, working-class people and other marginalised groups. It is important because, without explicit inclusion in a discipline, such as economics, they will not be considered at all or be considered to act as the “rational” middle-class white man. 

In the second article of the series, we delved into ecofeminism and Environmentalism of the Poor, which despite their similar focus areas, have very underlying understandings on how to interpret the climate crisis. Most importantly, these two disciplines have arisen as a result of women and people of Colour being included and the discourse has developed as a result of greater inclusion of their experiences being regarded as valid forms of knowledge. 

Lastly, we explored the opportunities in feminist ecological economics, with its sceptical attitude to growth, deliberate inclusion of otherwise marginalised peoples and its focus on planetary boundaries and social metabolism. Feminist ecological economics can help guide us in building a more just and sustainable world, all we need to do is to broadcast to a wider audience.

Bibliography

• Krausmann, F. (2017) 11 SOCIAL METABOLISM. In: ROUTLEDGE HANDBOOK OF ECOLOGICAL ECONOMICS Nature and Society. London & New York: Routledge, pp. 108–118.
• Malm, A. & Hornborg, A. (2014) The Geology of Mankind? A Critique of the Anthropocene Narrative. The Anthropocene Review, January.
• Martinez-Alier, J. (2002) The Environmentalism of the Poor. A Study of Ecological Conflicts and Evaluation. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing.
• Povitkina, M. (2018) The Limits of Democracy in Tackling Climate Change. Environmental Politics [Online], 27 (3) May, pp. 411–432. Available from: <https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09644016.2018.1444723> [Accessed 16 July 2021].